The Chronicles Of Kitchike

Quebec writer, poet, performer, and visual arts curator Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui takes us on a journey into the heart of a colourful Indigenous community. With wry humour, image-rich language, and a touch of the fantastic, he plunges us into the daily lives of ordinary men and women facing political, economic, and mythical forces beyond their control. This is an episodic novel, in which traditions and dreams collide with deprivation and corruption. Life and death, money and magic, tender and sometimes-tense relationships swirl around each other. The Chronicles of Kitchike is a powerful urban landscape of our multicultural society, and we are transported into a unique universe, to a world suave and mythical, replete with legend, home to a panoply of unforgettable characters.

Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui is a writer, poet, performer, and visual arts curator, who rejects categorizations and defines himself above all as a creator. A member of the Wendat people, he was raised and still lives in Wendake. He has been focused on promoting Indigenous arts and cultures for the past fifteen years. He is the co-founder and director of Kwahiatonk!, the only Canadian Francophone NPO entirely dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of Indigenous literature. In his writings, Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui alternates between the desire to share the wisdom and values of his ancestors, the need to express his individuality and the need to fight against the colonial grip.

Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo is a translator who works for clients in the public and private sector. Her translations of four novels by Quebec authors have been published by Exile Editions, including her translation of Marc Séguin’s Hollywood, one of five finalists for the Governor General’s Award for French literature in 2013. She is an active member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.